What color dog/cat hair is least obvious on black suits?

April 10, 2016 7:32 AM

We have cats with white/brown/ALL the fur. Lint rollers are a staple in my life - and I still end up with copious fur on my (mostly black) suits at work. I recently commented to Mr. Arnicae that it is too bad our cats don't have black fur and he said "Oh no, black fur is even worse - it shows up AND it looks dirty." What color of pet fur is more obvious on a predominantly black suit wardrobe?

I can find no internet sages on this so I'm turning to the Tribunal of the Green - what is your experience?

posted by arnicae to Pets & Animals (8 answers total)

I cant speak to the suit aspect, but I have 3 short-hair all black cats, and I think i'm doing relatively ok in the cat hair department given my typical casual dark-greys/blues/greens wardrobe. Light colors are a disaster, but for the other darker colors it doesn't seem to be as bad; it blends in decently well. For anything black-black though your husband is not wrong, because these cat hairs themselves aren't completely black, they're lighter on one end, dark on the other and brown in the middle (i'm staring at a couple now...).

However, I think the fact my cats are short-hair vs long hair and not huge shedders probably plays a larger role, just due to the sheer volume of cat hair. Don't get me wrong, i'm swimming in the stuff if i don't keep on top of it, but if these cats of mine were long hair shedders i would probably just give up entirely!
posted by cgg at 7:57 AM on April 10, 2016

I have both white and black fur at my house. White hair is definitely worse! Every single hair, no matter how large or small, short or long, shows up on a suit/sweater/tshirt. I've had to move away from plain black clothes to more heathered greys and tweeds, and that helps a lot. Also have to keep them in plastic suit bags in my closet (impossible to keep the furry little bozos out of there).

Although I'm sure the black cat has gotten hairs on me, I've never once noticed one. Black fur on white carpet, however, is a different question as I'm sure you know!
posted by bluesky78987 at 8:32 AM on April 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

Tuxedo cat (as per my profile pic) so I have the best of both worlds. White is worse, but I pretty much only wear dark clothing so maybe I'm dealing with confirmation bias.
posted by spitbull at 8:58 AM on April 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

We have a long hair blue cat and a short hair fawn cat. The fawn is so much worse from a cat hair perspective. That light hair is just so damn bright.
posted by 26.2 at 10:23 AM on April 10, 2016

"Oh no, black fur is even worse - it shows up AND it looks dirty."

I used to have two black short-hair cats and I wear a lot of black clothes (aprox 70% of my clothes are black). Mr. Arnicae is wrong. Black hair, or at least properly-black short cat hair hides well on all kinds of dark coloured clothing and totally does not make anything look furry or dirty. When I got a dark brown cat that didn't hide quite so well and did show up and look dirty on the really black things like suiting material.

Now I have a black and white cat and he makes everything look furry, with either one or both of his colours standing out on any clothing. And his blue-grey sister is even worse, her fur is stickier somehow and gets everywhere and hides against nothing. I just don't let them sit on my work clothes in the morning and try to change out of the good stuff before I touch the cats in the evening. And then hope they stay out of the clean washing pile before I put it away.

What color of pet fur is more obvious on a predominantly black suit wardrobe?

White is always going to be the worst. My black cats had teeny tiny white patches yet you could see every one of the white furs they dropped on me. Even now the fine white downy fur that comes off my grey-cat's stomach shows up more than her thick grey fur ever does.
posted by shelleycat at 11:57 AM on April 10, 2016

We had a brown cat, a grey cat, a black cat and a white dog. We found that white was the most visible against dark clothes, with grey and brown coming in a close second and the brown fur actually causing the "dirty-looking" effect your husband is attributing to black. Black fur was not noticeable unless you looked really closely.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:16 PM on April 10, 2016

I think the issue is that many black cats have a kind of grey undercoat or base, which shows up more than the long black guard hairs. If you get a black cat without and undercoat, where their fur is black to the root you won't have that problem.

That said, I think all pet hair is fairly noticeable in daylight, because it reflects light differently that cloth. You should probably resign yourself to defurring before leaving the house regardless, though maybe you can get away with it if you're not going to be doing anything client-facing or outdoors.
posted by ananci at 2:11 PM on April 10, 2016

Doesn't matter. I work at a place where we are required to wear all black clothing, and most of us have pets, and even those of us who have all-black pets are just covered in fur. It's the price you pay.

I dream of an airlock clean room where I can change into work clothes, but then all my colleagues would have to have one too or I'd still get contaminated.
posted by padraigin at 8:21 PM on April 10, 2016